she climbed through the window and dropped to the soggy
ground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her. Blackness swallowed
them as they turned toward the trail leading north--the only trail which
Jolly Roger could travel on a night like this. They heard the voice
of the Missioner calling from the window behind them. Then a crash of
thunder set the earth rolling under their feet, and the lull in
the storm came to an end. The sky split open with the vivid fire
of lightning. The trees wailed and whined, the rain fell again in a
smothering deluge, and through it Nada ran, gripping the knife as her
one defense against the demons of darkness--and always close at her side
ran Peter.

He could not see her in that pitchy blackness, except when the lightning
flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with drenched
clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair
streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After
the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the
stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and
then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The
rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they
were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake
him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through the
night, but Nada's stumbling feet and her panting breath and the strange
white pictures he saw of her when the sky split open with fire held him
back. Something told him that Nada must reach Jolly Roger. And he was
afraid she would stop. He wanted to bark to give her encouragement, as
he had often barked in their playful races in the green plain-lands on
the farther side of Cragg's Ridge. But the rain choked him. It beat down
upon him with the weight of heavy hands, it slushed up into his face
from pools in the trail and drove the breath from him when he attempted
to open his jaws. So he ran close--so close that at times Nada felt the
touch of his body against her.

In these first minutes of her fight to overtake the man she loved Nada
heard but one voice--a voice crying out from her heart and brain and
soul, a voice rising above the tumult of thunder and wind, urging her
on, whipping the strength from her frail body in pitiless exhortation.
Jolly Roger was less than half an hour ahead of her. And she must
overtake him--quickly--before the forests swallowed hi